plant perception (a.k.a. the Backster effect)

Plants are living things with cellulose
cell walls, lacking nervous or sensory organs. Animals do not have cellulose cell
walls but do have nervous or sensory organs. Animals are sentient; plants are not. That is, animals can experience pain,
pleasure, and various emotions. A brain and nervous system are necessary for
sentience; plants don't have brains or nervous systems. Plants react to
physical and chemical stimuli, but there is no justification for claiming
that plants are aware of these reactions, that they are self-conscious or
conscious beings. Plants have DNA and have evolved by natural and artificial
selection. Some plant adaptations can seem "intelligent," but calling plants
intelligent, or claiming that there is a "plant neurobiology," is to speak
metaphorically and is little more than a gimmick aimed at getting attention and
perhaps some grant money.*

It would never occur to a plant or animal physiologist to test plants
for consciousness or ESP because their knowledge
would be sufficient to rule out the possibility of plants having feelings
or perceptions on the order of human feeling or perception. In layman's
terms, plants don't have brains or anything similar to brains. One may as well speak of bacteria or viruses as having brains and nervous
systems.

However, a person completely ignorant of plant and animal science has
not only tested plants for perception and feeling, he claims that he has
scientific proof that plants experience a wide range of emotions and
thoughts. He also claims that plants can read human minds. His name is Cleve Backster and he published his research
in the International Journal of Parapsychology ("Evidence of a
Primary Perception in Plant Life," vol. 10, no. 4, Winter 1968, pp.
329-348). He tested his
plants on a polygraph machine and found that
plants react to thoughts and threats.

Dr.
Backster claims to have a D.Sc. in Complementary Medicine from Medicina
Alternativa (1996). He has parlayed his doctorate into a position at the
California
Institute for Human Science Graduate School and Research Center, an
unaccredited institution founded by Dr. Hiroshi Motoyama for the study of
"the human being as tridimensional." Dr. Motoyama is said to be
a scientist and Shinto priest who "has awakened to states of
consciousness that enable him to see beyond the limits of space and
time."*

Backster's claims were refuted by Horowitz, Lewis, and Gasteiger (1975)
and Kmetz (1977). Kmetz summarized the case against Backster in an article
for the Skeptical Inquirer in 1978. Backster had not used proper
controls in doing his study. When controls were used, no detection of
plant reaction to thoughts or threats could be found. These researchers
found that the cause of the polygraph contours could have been due to a
number of factors, including static electricity, movement in the room,
changes in humidity, etc.

Backster tells us that it was on February 2, 1966, in his
"lab" in New York City that he did his first plant experiment.
His "lab" was not a science lab. In fact, it wasn't much of a lab at
all in the beginning. It was just a place where he conducted training in the use of the polygraph.
There was a plant in the room. He recalls the following:

For whatever reason, it occurred to me that
it would be interesting to see how long it took the water to get from
the root area of this plant, all the way up this long trunk and out and
down to the leaves.

After doing a saturation watering of the
plant, I thought, "Well gee whiz, I've got a lot of polygraph
equipment around; let me hook the galvanic skin response section of the
polygraph onto the leaf.*

The galvanic skin response
(GSR) section of the polygraph measures the resistance of the skin to a small
electrical current. Defenders of the polygraph think that galvanic skin
responses are related to anxiety, and therefore to truthfulness. The
theory is that when a person lies they are anxious and the amount of sweat
increases slightly but measurably. As sweat increases, the resistance to
electrical current decreases. Clearly, Backster is a very curious
individual. A less inquisitive person would probably not care how long it
would take water to get from the root to the leaves in an office plant.
Not only did Backster care but he put his polygraph equipment to use as a
measuring device. He reasoned as follows:

I felt that as the contaminated water came
up the trunk and down into the leaf that the leaf becoming more
saturated and a better conductor it would give me the rising time of the
water....I would be able to get that on the polygraph chart tracing.

Why would the polygraph indicate this? Because, he says, he was using a
"wheatstone bridge circuit that is designed to measure resistance
changes." Presumably, resistance changes would be picked up by the
polygraph as the water reached the leaf. He predicted that the resistance
would slowly drop and the tracings on his polygraph paper would rise as
the water reached the leaf. Instead, the opposite happened, which, he
says, "amazed me a little bit."

Apparently, he moved the electrodes and saw that the contour of the
polygraph chart was "the contour of a human being tested, reacting
when you are asking a question that could get them in trouble."
Backster claims that he then gave up his interest in measuring how long it
takes water to get from the roots to the leaves of his plant. He says he
believed that the plant was trying "to show me people-like reactions." He claims his next thought was: "What can I do that
will be a threat to the well-being of the plant, similar to the fact that
a relevant question regarding a crime could be a threat to a person taking
a polygraph test if they're lying?" This is truly is amazing. The
contour of the graph triggered in him an immediate identification of the
plant with one of his subjects. Until that moment, apparently, Backster
had never suspected that the plants in his office were just like people
and would respond similarly. Why he thought of threatening the plant
isn't quite clear. I doubt that he threatened his human subjects. It also
is not quite clear why the response to a threat to one's well-being would
result in the same kind of response as being caught in a lie. At least
Backster seems not to have considered seriously the notion that the plant
might try to deceive him.

Backster says he tried for 13 minutes and 55 seconds to get a reaction
out of the plant by doing such things as dipping a leaf in warm coffee,
but he got no response. A less devoted inquisitor might have given up and
gone home at this point, but not Backster. He concluded that the
plant seemed like it was bored. Then, he had his Eureka! experience:
"I know what I am going to do: I am going to burn that plant leaf,
that very leaf that's attached to the polygraph." Now, why he would
burn the leaf isn't clear, since burning it would (a) eliminate its
moisture, making measurement of galvanic response impossible, and (b) it
might damage his equipment attached to the leaf. Anyway, he tells us that
there was a problem with carrying out his plan: he didn't have any
matches. He claims, however, that while standing there some five feet from
the plant the polygraph "went into a wild agitation." Rather
than conclude that maybe the water finally got to the leaf or some other
natural event was causing the polygraph needle movements, Backster
became convinced that the plant was reading his mind and was reacting to
his intent to burn it. This is indeed an interesting inference to make at
this point. He gives no indication that he even considered that there
might be other possible explanations for the movement of his polygraph.
This may strike some readers as a good thing, that a gifted mind
immediately grasps the truth. But actually this is a bad thing because
your intuition could be wrong. What is very curious is that after more
than thirty years of experiments, there is still no evidence that Backster
and his many supporters see the importance of using controls in their
studies of alleged plant perception.

Anyway, to return to the original experiment: Backster admits that he committed a bit of petty larceny in the name of science: he went to
another office, went into a secretary's desk drawer and retrieved some
matches. When he got back to his experiment, he lit a match, but careful
and observant scientist that he was, he realized that the machine
was so agitated he wouldn't be able to measure any additional agitation.
So, he left the room. When he returned "the thing just evened
right out again, which really rounded it out and gave me a very, very high
quality observation." What he meant by "a very, very high
quality observation" is not clear. Backster's true genius is
exhibited in his final remark on the remarkable experiment:

Now when my partner in the polygraph school
we were running at the time came in, he was able to do the same thing
also, as long as he intended to burn the plant leaf. If he pretended to
burn the plant leaf, it wouldn't react.

It could tell the difference between
pretending you are going to, compared to when you actually intend
to do it, which is quite interesting in itself from a plant psychology
standpoint.*

Plant psychology? I think Backster invented it that night. Had he just
a smattering of understanding regarding the importance of using controls
for studies which try to establish causality, he might have proceeded
differently. The first step is to clearly define what you are testing and
what each step in the procedure consists of. Backster and his partner
don't have a clear notion of the difference between intending to burn the
plant and pretending to be intending to burn the plant. Next, it might
have occurred to them that there might be a better way to measure
electrical current in plants than using a polygraph. They might have
consulted with some experts and set up an experiment with proper
equipment. Once they
clarified what they were testing and how they would test it, they might have done twenty runs with the secretary
doing the intending or pretending, them not knowing which, and them
collecting the polygraph data. They would tell a third party which
runs indicated pretending and which runs indicated intending. The third party
would compare their claims with the secretary's data. That third party
would also make sure that the polygraphers wouldn't be able to see what
the secretary was doing during the experiment, lest they be influenced by
something in her behavior. Then, just to be sure that it wasn't some
movement the secretary made when she intended to burn the plant that
caused the polygraph reaction, she should be made to make exactly the same
movements when she intended and when she pretended to burn the plant. He
should have done several trials with several different plants. And he
probably should not have watered his plant just before doing the experiment.
He should have known that moisture or humidity changes would affect the
GSR readings. The
fact is that Backster has never done anything like a controlled experiment
and is no closer today than he was in 1966 to
understanding why his polygraph made the contours it did when it was
attached to his plant. Backster's admirers can truthfully say that his
experiment has been repeated thousands of times around the world.
Unfortunately, repeatability justifies claiming an outcome is probably
true only if the original experiment was done properly.

sowing and reaping

Backster's claims have been publicized and supported by several people
with qualifications and knowledge equal to his own: journalist
Peter Tompkins and gardener
Christopher O. Bird authored The Secret Life of Plants first published in
1973, a presentation of the work of Backster and other
"scientists" which allegedly proves that plants perceive telepathically
and experience emotions such as fear and love. Bird is the author of Modern Vegetable Gardening andTompkins
has several "secrets" books: Secrets of the Great Pyramid
(1997), The Secret Life of Nature: Living in Harmony With the Hidden
World of Nature Spirits from Fairies to Quarks (1997)and
Secrets of the Soil: New Solutions for Restoring Our Planet (1998).

Another supporter and expositor of Backster's work is Robert B. Stone,
Ph.D., member of Mensa, and author of
The Secret Life of Your Cells published in 1994. Stone is also the
author of the Silva
Method (Jose Silva's
mind control and self-healing program) and the Silva
Method: Unlocking the Genius Within. Stone and Silva authored one
book together: You
the Healer. However, if one searches the literature of science,
one searches in vain for support for the notion that plants are telepathic
and feel emotions.

Despite the lack of scientific support for the notion of plant
perception, the idea is accepted by many as not only true but as having
been verified by numerous scientific studies! In fact, the power
of plants to understand human thought by "reading" our "bioenergetic fields" is known
among parapsychologists as the Backster effect.*

Typical of the testimonials in defense of Backster's claims are the
following. Notice how they echo the claim that Backster's experiment has
been duplicated many times by many different people. Notice, too, that
like good storytellers these advocates embellish the tale with some
interesting exaggerations. None of these
testimonials, however, mentions the critical studies that both failed to verify
Backster's claims and also explained why his studies were flawed.

Cleve Backster used a polygraph
(lie-detector) to test plants, attaching electrodes to the leaves. By
recording electrical impulses he found the plants to be extremely
sensitive to his thoughts, particularly thoughts that threatened their
well-being. Backster also observed a reaction in a plant when even the
smallest cells were killed near it. He noted that they have a kind of
memory, reacting to someone who earlier had done harm to another plant
nearby: in a line-up of anonymous people the plant could pick out the
one who had performed the act (John Van Mater, theosophist).*

Cleve Backster was also famous, notorious in
fact, and had been since about 1968 when he first claimed that plants
have primary perceptions which can sense human thoughts and respond to
them. This was the same as saying that PLANTS have sentient
consciousness, are telepathic, and can process non-physical information.
This, of course, absolutely shocked, angered and horrified scientists of
all kinds, and Backster was pilloried in the media -- much to the
enjoyment of hard-core parapsychologists who, back then, had nothing
good to say about him.* To help correct this dismal rejection of
Backster, it wasn't until the late 1980s that neurobiologists discovered
and confirmed that plants do possess "primary perceptions"
because they have "rudimentary neural nets."*[This claim from Ingo Swann is pure codswallop. Neurobiologists
do not study plants and you will search in vain through the annals of
neurobiological literature for verification of the Backster effect.]

....map dowsing has just as simple an
explanation as on-site dowsing. Map dowsing seems to be related to what
is sometimes called the "Backster Effect." Backster is a lie
detector specialist and what he did was to attach a galvanic skin
response device to the top leaf of a plant. This device measures the
electrical resistance of the skin. He then watered the plant, fully
expecting to measure how long it would take for the water to reach the
leaf and change its resistance. Instead the lie detector immediately
indicated, what would be a happy effect in humans. This puzzled him so
he decided to traumatize the plant by burning, a leaf. The plant showed
a fear response on the lie detector as soon as he had this thought.
Backster's experiments have been duplicated thousands of times by many
persons using many variations and have been well publicized on TV and in
many books (Walt Woods, map dowser and author of the 20-page
booklet Letter to Robin: A Mini Course in Pendulum Dowsing).

Backster's work in the late '60s and early
'70s was an important impetus for the best selling The Secret Life of
Plants by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird. In the '80s, his work
was chronicled by Robert Stone in The Secret Life of Your Cells.
His research journey started with the 1966 almost accidental rediscovery
that plants are sentient and respond to the spontaneous emotions and
strongly expressed intentions of relevant humans. (J. Chandra Bose*
of India had demonstrated a similar principle in the early part of the
20th century.) Using an instrument to measure galvanic skin responses (GSR),
a part of his polygraph or lie detector stock-in-trade, Backster
attempted to determine whether it would measure the moment of
rehydration of a plant whose roots were freshly watered. It did not but
to his surprise, the GSR meter registered his threat to burn the plant
leaf when he spontaneously thought of the idea....

Over the last thirty years literally
hundreds of experiments have proved the existence of this
biocommunication known as the "Backster Effect." My own
personal participation in one of these experiments left me without a
doubt that a culture of yogurt in a shielded cage showed extraordinary
reactions to feeling that were stirred up in me and two female
colleagues as we discussed controversial gender and power issues.
Interestingly, the yogurt did not react to periods of intellectual
discussion about the same issues; it only became agitated when our
comments were charged with emotion (Paul Von Ward, MPA and M.S.,
researcher and writer in the fields of "consciousness and frontier
science").*

In 1969 Marcel [Joseph Vogel] gave a course
in creativity for engineers at IBM. It was at this time that he read an
article in Argosy magazine entitled “Do Plants Have Emotions?” about
the work of polygraph expert Cleve Backster into the responsiveness of
plants to human interaction. Despite initial rejection of the concept of
human-plant communication, he decided to explore these strange claims.

He was able to duplicate the Backster effect
of using plants as transducers for bio-energetic fields that the human
mind releases, demonstrating that plants respond to thought. He used
split leaf philodendrons connected to a Wheatstone Bridge that would
compare a known resistance to an unknown resistance. He learned that
when he released his breath slowly there was virtually no response from
the plant. When he pulsed his breath through the nostrils, as he held a
thought in mind, the plant would respond dramatically. It was also found
that these fields, linked to the action of breath and thought, do not
have a significant time domain to them. The responsiveness of the plants
to thought was also the same whether eight inches away, eight feet, or
eight thousand miles! Based on the results of the experiments the
inverse square law does not apply to thought. This was the beginning of
Marcel’s transformation from being a purely rational scientist to
becoming a spiritual or mystical scientist.

Basically it was found that plants respond
more to the thought of being cut, burned, or torn than to the actual
act. He discovered that if he tore a leaf from one plant a second plant
would respond, but only if he was paying attention to it. The plants
seemed to be mirroring his own mental responses. He concluded that the
plants were acting like batteries, storing the energy of his thoughts
and intentions. He said of these experiments: “I learned that there is
energy connected with thought. Thought can be pulsed and the energy
connected with it becomes coherent and has a laser-like power.”(Rumi
Da, purveyor of fine crystals).*

In the seventies, a best-selling book called
The Secret Life of Plants presented scientific research from
around the world that explored plant intelligence. The chapter which
made the biggest impression on me described a retired policeman in New
York City, Cleve Backster, who trained people how to use lie detectors.
As a lark, he hooked up his plants to a polygraph so he could monitor
their responses.

One day, Backster approached his Dracaena
Massangeana with a lighted match and acted as if he were going to burn
it. Not only did the plant go wild on the graph but every other plant in
the place did, too. He could hardly believe it. Continuing to
experiment, he discovered that the plants responded to his thoughts even
when he was miles away. One day, on the New Jersey Turnpike, he decided
to let them know, through thought, that he was on his way home. When he
arrived, he found that the plants had responded excitedly on the graph
at the exact time he was communicating to them. Proximity was not a
factor in their ability to sense him!

Everyone can develop this skill and ability.
We all have it within us. All we have to do is acknowledge the
possibility of it being true and then proceed with an open mind and
heart (Judith Handlesman, spiritual gardener and vegetarian).*

Clearly, Backster has his followers and they think he has done
fundamental and extraordinary work in science. Why hasn't he been awarded
his Nobel Prize? Why does nearly the entire scientific community ignore him?
The answer should be obvious. Nevertheless, Backster
continues his work at the Backster Research Center in San Diego,
California, where he claims to be able to demonstrate that his plants
respond to his loving thoughts and even obey his thought commands.

Ingo by jingo!

One
of Backster's greatest admirers and defenders is remote
viewing promoter Ingo
Swann ("Remote Viewing - The Real Story"). Swann is the one
quoted above who falsely claims that Backster's work was vindicated in the 1980s
by neurobiologists when it was discovered that plants have neural networks. In 1971,
according to Swann, Backster invited him to his plant lab and polygraph
school. There Ingo claims he, too, made the polygraph needle hooked up to
the plant "go haywire" when he thought of burning the plant with
a match. He was able to repeat the event several times and then he
couldn't get a response. Swann recalls the event and comes up with what he
and Backster think must be the logical conclusion. Of course, neither one
of them thinks they could be mistaken or deceived. It does not occur to
either of them that they had better set up some controls.

"What does THAT mean," I asked.
"You tell me." Then a very eerie thought occurred to me, so
astonishing that it caused goosebumps. "Do you mean," I asked,
"that it has LEARNED that I'm not serious about really burning its
leaf? So that it now knows it need not be alarmed."

Backster smiled. "YOU said it, I
didn't. Try another kind of harmful thought." So I thought of
putting acid in the plant's pot. Bingo! But the same "learning
curve" soon repeated itself. Now I already understood in my own
"reality" that plants are sentient and telepathic, as all
plant lovers know who talk to their plants. But that plants could LEARN
to recognize between true and artificial human intent came as a
thunderbolt! Among all this astonishment I came across the concept of
the "learning curve" which ultimately was to play THE feature
role in the development of remote viewing.

But Backster was moving on. "Do you
think you could influence some kind of metal or chemical?" "I
don't know how to influence anything. But I could try." So for
several weeks I went to the Times Square lab to try to zap metals and
chemicals -- and the march of what I was unknowingly being sucked into
moved into October, 1971.*

This kind of amateur approach to experiment and naive reinforcement of
speculations as if they were facts established by incontrovertible
evidence is typical of Backster and his supporters. A knowledgeable
scientist would never be taken in by such rudimentary reasoning and
speculation. But a scientifically ignorant person could easily be duped by these experiments.

the Backster effect and
primitive religion

Jim Cranford is another defender of Backster, whom he sees as providing
proof that animistic religions truly did involve communicating with
vegetation.

Although similar experiments [to Backster's]
have been repeated thousands of times, all over the world, for more than
15 years, we have failed to grasp the implications. Part of the problem
is that Backster is not a "scientist" and those guys don't
like to admit that anyone else knows anything. That's pride and
arrogance at its worst, but not so unusual in the laboratory. Even the
rest of us find it hard to believe that the "primitives" were
actually communicating with their plants through rituals and sacrifice.
We simply refuse to believe that there could be any
"intelligence" around here but us, while we live in a world
smarter than us at every turn. It is obvious that our collective view of
primitive religion is in need of some revision.*

At least Cranford recognizes that Backster is not a scientist.
"Those guys" would require controls when they do causal studies.

Backster and theosophy

Another advocate of Backster's ideas is theosophist
John Van Mater, Jr., who thinks that Backster's work supports the notion
that

...there is a life
force, a cosmic energy surrounding living things, shared by all kingdoms
including the human....Nature is a great brotherhood of beings, a symbiosis on many levels, most
of it beyond our detection and ordinary understanding. The vegetable
kingdom is an essential layer of the living planet's vitality or prana,
helping to provide in its metabolism a breathing, intelligent organ that
produces and regulates the atmosphere as well as transfers energy into the
biosphere. Plants are also a link in the chain of beings, in which each
kingdom or level needs the others in order to function and evolve.
(See "Our
Intelligent Companions, the Plants," John Van Mater, Jr., Sunrise
magazine, April/May 1987 published by Theosophical
University Press.)

Thus, Backster's shoddy science is brought in to
support metaphysical notions to go along with his support for dowsing,
energy healing, telepathy, remote viewing and who knows what else.

scientific support?

Although mainstream science has shunned Backster's claims about
telepathic plants and their "primary perception," Earthpulse.com,
a New Age UFO/Environmentalist site that sells "frontier
science" books, allegedly found a botanist named
Richard M. Klein
(1923-1997)
from the University of Vermont to provide a blurb for The Secret Life
of Plants.

If I can't 'get inside a plant' or 'feel
emanations' from a plant and don't know anyone else who can, that doesn't
detract one whit from the possibility that some people can and do....

Truer words were never spoke. Too bad Dr. Klein didn't teach Mr. Backster how to conduct a
proper double-blind controlled study. After all, Backster may have finally found
a proper use for the polygraph.

*note1: It is interesting that John Kmetz had a
different reading of the media. Kmetz writes: "It is unfortunate that
the popular press has taken Backster's experiments and presented the results
to the public in such a way that many people now believe plants can do
something that, in fact, they cannot. The press, for the most part, never
mentions that articles on the Backster effect are based on observations of
only seven plants. Perhaps they need to be reminded, again, that they are
making exaggerated claims from an experiment that no one, including
Backster, by his own refusal to do so, has been able to replicate."

*note2: Sir Jagadis Chundra Bose was a Bengali scientist and admirer of the
French vitalist Henri Bergson